After calling off the launch of a smart display device earlier this year, Facebook is reportedly planning to announce it next week. Here are the details from Cheddar‘s Alex Heath, who cites unnamed sources:

The main feature will be video chat, and Facebook will use facial recognition to tag users and follow them around the room.(Amazon’s Echo Show and Google-powered smart displays don’t identify users’ faces, though some security cameras do.)

The device will have a privacy shutter to disable the camera tracking, but amazingly, Facebook may have only thought to include this in response to its own recent privacy scandals.

While the device was once rumored to rely a homegrown voice assistant to handle basic commands, Portal may instead lean on Amazon’s Alexa for things like music, recipes, and news briefings.

Portal could come in small and large sizes for $300 and $400, respectively.

People will not only tolerate this invasion, not only welcome it but also pay for it. Crazy times. Facebook is like a vampire – never invite it into your home.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday she believes it’s time for White House officials to invoke the 25th Amendment and begin the process of removing President Trump from office.

The comments come one day after a blistering op-ed published in The New York Times by an anonymous senior administration official that blasted Trump as amoral and “anti-democratic” and said staffers must constantly rebut the president’s “misguided impulses” and “worst inclinations.”

“If senior administration officials think the president of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment,” Warren told CNN.
“The Constitution provides for a procedure whenever the vice president and senior officials think the president can’t do his job. It does not provide that senior officials go around the president — take documents off his desk, write anonymous op-eds. … Every one of these officials have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It’s time for them to do their job,” she added.

The author of the Times op-ed said the idea of removing Trump from office had already been floated by his top aides.

Fake news begets fake crisis? In the 1% off chance this moves forward, watch out. It has no chance of success. However, if played out, it could easily precipitate something hot, something we haven’t seen in 153 years.

We are reliably informed that any and all “conspiracy theories” are the mark of insanity. Therefore, it’s so sad to see what’s become of a once noble swamp critter:

For a look at how Special Counsel Robert Mueller could tie Russian election interference to American citizens, watch the C-word.

Not coordination or collusion, but conspiracy.

One charge in particular — conspiracy to defraud the U.S. — has cropped up in several of the Mueller team’s major cases. The allegation shows up in filings against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as in indictments of Russian nationals accused earlier this month of hacking into Democratic Party organizations and election infrastructure. Conspiracy charges are significant because they’re building blocks: Once prosecutors allege a conspiracy, they can add more individuals later.

Donald Trump and his circle have long focused on a different buzzword, saying that there was no collusion with Russians, and subsequently that if there was collusion, Trump wasn’t aware of it. Now comes Trump attorney-cum-spokesman Rudy Giuliani. ”I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians,” Giuliani told CNN this week. Trump echoed that in a tweet: “Collusion is not a crime.”

That is at once technically correct and, according to former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, beside the point.

“To say there’s no crime of collusion means nothing,” said Rocah. “That label isn’t in the criminal statutes. But that doesn’t matter because the conduct that underlies collusion can be, under certain circumstances, conspiracy to defraud the U.S.”

As of yet, it is unclear which federal agency Mueller and the Russia-Gate conspirators have allegedly defrauded. Candidates include the DOJ, Congress, the Post Office, the White House, and the Treasury.

It’s also unclear how an insanity defense plays out in an enemy combatant proceeding.

Everything control. Like SJWs, gun controllers always lie. And after they get the guns, they still can’t stop stealing. They move onto things like assault knives: see London’s campaign of sheer idiocy:

An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new “knife control” policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.

The “tough, immediate” measures involve an incredible police crackdown, a ban on home deliveries of knives and acid, and expanding law enforcement stop-and-search powers so that police may stop anyone they believe to be a threat, or planning a knife or acid attack.

Khan announced Friday that the city has created a “violent crime taskforce of 120 officers” tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million into the Metropolitan Police department so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks. He’s also empowering the Met Police to introduce “targeted patrols with extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected,” according to a statement.

The mayor took to Twitter to announce his new policies. “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”

Strangely enough, Khan is responsible for decreasing the number of stop-and-searches, having previously declared the tactic racist and potentially Islamophobic. It’s also not clear what local Londoners will now use to cut their food.

Parliament is also set to take up heavy “knife control” legislation when it resumes this week. The U.K. government is expected to introduce a ban on online knife sales and home knife deliveries, declare it “illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters in private” — “zombie knives” are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon — and ban sales of caustic materials to anyone under the age of 18, the Independent reports.

London has seen a dramatic uptick in murder rates, surpassing even New York City in the number of homicides every month since the beginning of 2018. It has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and, technically, knives carried “without good reason” are off limits to anyone under the age of 18.

This is “your” government, post gun control. No, the gun murders don’t stop, increasing rather. And neither does the theft of property and liberty by those who disarmed the people.

“There is never a reason to carry a knife...” In dystopian Londonistan steaks now cut themselves, envelopes open at the asking, and string is merely wished in two. Or maybe they’re banning all those things as well. “Caustic” chemicals too. What’s that include? Break dust cleaner? Drain cleaner? Toothpaste? H2O? Water, aka Hydric ACID, is caustic.

I joked about this kind of stuff repeatedly, half joked. Here is proof of the harsh truth behind satire and sarcastic rhetoric.

This is what comes after you surrender the guns, America. This is also what comes when you surrender your nation to incompatible foreigners and the communist cult of the multi-“culture.” Paying attention?

Rather than give any of the million refutative reasons to carry a knife, I’ll just close like this: There is never a reason to turn your city over to a psychotic semi-savage in a suit. There is never a reason to surrender your guns, your knives, or your freedom. Do so at your own extreme risk.

Let’s see what we have here… The strange thing is that, if one looks around thoroughly, one may just find something one agrees with, kind of. The rest? Yikes! And as with mostso many all of these types of cases, the shooter was known to authorities.

A pictorial guide to nuttery:

We’ve lost an icon, a first…

Mmmmkay, little truth there…

Serious as a gunshot…

Dime. They’re telling you they love you…

Cultural misunderstandings? BTW: I understand why YT might cut all of her videos.

…

A few drinks and maybe… Oh, not now, no…

Uhhhh…

Ummmm..

There we go! That’s scary crazy without the gun!

Please leave YouTube alone. They’re not perfect but this isn’t the answer. I have a channel there – vested bias on my part.

No puns or platitudes or sarcasm was necessary for this one – no need. Just wow!

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”

During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court overturned Chief Justice Burger’s and others’ long-settled understanding of the Second Amendment’s limited reach by ruling, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that there was an individual right to bear arms. I was among the four dissenters.

That decision — which I remain convinced was wrong and certainly was debatable — has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power. Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform. It would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States — unlike every other market in the world. It would make our schoolchildren safer than they have been since 2008 and honor the memories of the many, indeed far too many, victims of recent gun violence.

Come on, Stevens! In your lifetime? The man has seen a lot. He surely remembers the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, and the Children’s Crusade of 1212. Like that latter episode, the current hubbub is as misguided, nefarious, and sure to be as ill-fated.

I’ve covered gun control previously and the kids’ march especially. While not backing off the issue I’ve urged restraint towards the young, uninformed, and naive children. However, I’ve said that those behind the mania should be held to account. Stevens falls into that category. I actually welcomed his editorial position as I figured, aged or not, he is among the very best the grabbers could offer.

I am sorely disappointed.

There’s nothing there. At all.

A sufficient counter argument to this tripe is: BULLSHIT!

Now we have that all settled…

It’s funny, almost. First, Stevens ran his editorial on a digital system – see that above link. This is 21st Century news. It’s different from older newspapers, say, from the 18th century. It’s kind of like the difference highlighted by the Times’s feature picture:

NYT. Yes, as corrected, that’s a musket up top….

Their point, his idiotic point, is that the one weapon was available when the 2A was enacted. The other, being a modern creation, was not and, thus, is not protected. Funny.

By the same illogic, the Times’s website, to say nothing of what you’re reading here and now, is not protected by the First Amendment. It’s not free speech nor free press. The only real, legal newsprint is print. If you don’t get news on low quality paper with blotchy ink from some young boy on the street corner, then you’re as bad as the NRA killing all those kids they never kill.

It’s also almost funny that the left wants to repeal something that, for an age, they denied existed. I appreciate their newfound honesty but it’s a little late in coming. They literally used to say the 2A wasn’t really part of the Constitution – despite it’s being right there in black and white. Conversely, they had no problem seeing Abortion floating in some nebulous prenumbra. Maybe one needs a bow tie to see it all clearly.

Prior to 2010 or so most Con Law textbooks were utterly devoid of any mention of the 2A. A few, like Lawrence Friedman’s, may scant mention, usually with a bare citation to Miller v. US (1939).

Why repeal something that’s not even real? My guess is a case of bad losering.

Stevens rests much of his “argument” on Miller. Liberals love to pretend that was the only court decision on the 2A prior to the 21st century. It was not. But it was perhaps the worst decided and most misinterpreted. So the Nine said civilians had no right to non-military quality arms. What does that mean? They didn’t say but one could easily extrapolate that, under their reasoning, only military-grade weapons qualify for legal protection against infringement. Probably not what the left had in mind. Of course, what the Court had in mind in 1939 later fell apart factually. In Vietnam soldiers made copious use of short-barreled shotguns. Hmmm.

At any rate, Heller and MacDonald cured the question of “does the Second Amendment really say what it plainly says?” It does.

And, again maybe it’s the age thing – dunno, but here Stevens violates his own canons of legal interpretation. His approach, as detailed in The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Interpretation, J. P. Stevens, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, April, 1992:

Read the Statute

Read the Whole Statute

Read the Text in Contemporary Context

Look into Legislative History

Use Some Common Sense

Taking the 2A as what it is, a Super Statute, and applying those rules, one reaches an incontrovertible conclusion: the thing is what it is and means what it says. 1) the language is unambiguous. That should be the end of it. But: 2) it fits with the rest of the Bill of Rights. 3) Temporizing the thought, either then or now, it fits with the idea of individual liberty. 4) the Founders demanded an armed citizenry as deterrent of tyranny. 5) What do the various facts tell us?

No question should remain after the first four steps are utilized. If, however, one needs more proof to affirm the meaning and intent by number five, then one should analyze what’s going on with guns in America. Here, as with most logic, the left fails completely.

The facts tell us: armed citizens still stand in the way of tyrants; guns save lives; the innocent lives lost to guns are: few, offset by the many saved, only part of the greater number of regrettable homicides annually, tiny in comparison to lives lost to other means/things, etc.; having the highest number and percentage of private guns in the world, the US still has one of the lowest gun murder rates on the planet, and; even with all those guns, and with all the hideous social, economic, and legal changes in the country, there has been no great or noticeable change in gun usage of late.

But why look at the law and the facts? Heck, that’s what judges do. Maybe it’s better to listen to young know-nothings scream about anecdotes. Maybe it’s better to blame the NRA for things it had nothing to do with. Promote a little fear. A little hysteria. Some lies.

And, for what? The Second Amendment will not be repealed any time soon. Good luck assembling a Convention of the States. Better luck getting super majorities in Congress and the State Houses. They can’t even get more “meaningful” gun control through in regular statutory form – though they try.

What would the Stevens’s Amendment say? A plain repeal? How would that work or be worded? “The rights of the people are hereby infringed.” That’s what he’s suggesting. The natural right to arms is independent of any amendment or law. It’s just that in some places it is infringed upon, violated. Simply repealing the 2A would not necessarily ban guns from private hands.

Maybe he means to include that ban explicitly in the new language. “The right is infringed and the people are barred from keeping and bearing arms.” Perhaps there could be a specific exemption for 18th century antiques or the swords and slings of Stevens’s youth…

I’m glad Stevens spoke up. It’s good to know what the enemy is thinking, what they want. They want to disarm you and leave you utterly helpless before their other plans and actions. Once more, see the thoughts, words, and acts of [pick your favorite murderous dictator from history].

In his final decade on the Court Stevens voted to extend at least some basic rights to Americans declared and held as enemy combatants, enemies of the government and the people. That might work out well for him. Some, like Vox Day, suggest Stevens has, via his First-Amendment-unprotected speech, committed treason and should be arrested for it. Debbie Gun Control-Schultz (and any co-signers) too. It’s a strange new world we’ve entered. I’ll leave that alone except to say: 1) enemy combatants do not have to be arrested..., and; 2) hey, Stevens is old, 97 going on 1,000; why bother?

If this was their best, then their best won’t do. A rock group told me so. However, now that they’re being honest about the thoughts and desires, we had best keep an eye on these anti-freedom types. Freedom: defend it or lose it.

*This subject shall be the focus of a video retort for FP tomorrow, likely to be linked and reposted here. Stay tuned.

Janet Yellen issued her final official interview as Fed Chairman: Lil High...

Janet Yellen ended her long career at the Federal Reserve with concerns over how high the stock market has surged under her watch.

The S&P 500 has soared 315 percent since the March 2009 bear market lows and about 53 percent since she took over as chair of the central bank in 2004.

Yellen said in an interview with CBS News that market valuations are the source of some concern as she headed into private life following a 14-year Fed career, the last four as the chair. She spoke as the market finally took a breather from what has been a breathtaking move higher, with the Dow industrials falling 666 points Friday.

“Well, I don’t want to say too high. But I do want to say high,” she said. “Price/earnings ratios are near the high end of their historical ranges.”

In addition to elevated equity prices, Yellen also said commercial real estate is “quite high” compared with rents.

But not to worry – another wise, Creature-approved acolyte of economic deception will be along Monday… The interests of the bankers are in good hands. And, it’s really them that matter the most, right?

Shots fired first thing in the morning. The news rehashed all day long. If you just emerged from under a rock, in a cave, on a desert island – go back! But first know what everyone else does: James T. Hodgkinson, 66, of Illinois, opened fire with a rifle this morning at a baseball field just outside D.C. His targets were Congressional Republicans practicing for the annual GOP/DNC charity game.

Five people were wounded, including LA Congressman Steve Scalise. All are expected to recover. Fortunately, only the lunatic shooter was killed, dropped by Capitol Police at the scene.

James T. Hodgkinson, crazy man (deceased).

James Hodgkinson was a deranged leftist, Bernie Sanders fanboy, and homicidal sociopath. Even CNN is covering that angle which means it must be universally understood and accepted. Enough with it.

Several things:

I have no use whatever for Republicans and Democrats. I’m glad they’ve found solidarity today. Great. “An attack on one of us … blah, blah, blah.” In truth they almost always have solidarity in their quest to wreck the country.

The baseball game is a perfect metaphor. On the ball field, Team GOP squares off against Team DNC. They oppose each other in play on the field but the overall goal is shared: raise money for charity. If that were their entire purpose I would applaud wholeheartedly. It isn’t.

In Congress, Team GOP squares off against Team DNC. They oppose each other with idiotic grandstanding and faux ideologies but the goal is shared: raise power for their Big Club masters. More power and money for them, less of everything for you.

I’m not saying take a rifle and shoot them. I am not saying that.

The whole lot of them aren’t worth a bullet, let alone the 50 fired off this morning.

But they have, with much and great assistance, utterly wrecked and destroyed the country I grew up in. Maybe “utterly” isn’t the right word just yet. Parts linger here and there. But darned near everything is fractured, including the people.

Hodgkinson is a picture perfect example of that fracture. And there are many more where he came from. People on the left really, really hate Donald Trump, GOPers, God, and you. They make plays about assassinating Trump. They hold up a mockery of his bloody severed head. They punch people talking to journalists. They hit people with bike locks. Some, more than just one nut from Illinois, are willing to murder.

The right-wing can boast some similar ideologues, but this post isn’t about them. This is about the leftoids, the communists, the blue-hair, shrieking loonies who hate the above mentioned personas. They hate a lot of people and a lot of things. And I’m writing about the “normal” ones. Their ultra-violent criminal allies in the ghettos and their pets of the Jihad are bad enough. But the home team regulars may be the worst of all.

Yes, they are full of hate. However, lately and quietly they have seemingly gotten over one object of hate – guns. Early this morning, before the facts were clear, I think I only heard the once ubiquitous calls for gun control from two sources, two fringe sources at that. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, other Democrats, CNN, and the media have been strangely quiet about the whole “a gun did this” thing. It’s almost like they’re over it. And they might be.

Truthfully, most lefties never favored full gun control. Sure, they wanted to take your guns and mine. But they always had ways of carving out exceptions for themselves, their friends, and their security guards. Funny.

I started reading maybe back in December about the rise in liberal gun ownership. Just this time last year the same people were beating the same old, worn drum of disarmament. Remember Kersh Kuntzman almost exactly a year ago – he of the frightening AR-15 experience? My but things seem to have changed.

A year ago they were against guns. By December they had started buying them. At rallies and riots, here and there, this spring, they started toting them – in poor and uncomfortable form. Today they started using them – again, rather poorly. (Open baseball field? Clear day? AK at close range? Five wounded? Come on…). Tomorrow, however, cometh the next natural progressive step: shooting well. That’s coming about and up to speed pretty fast.

I’ve already heard some idiots making fun of the libs for being: soft, wimps, queers, etc. “They probably use little pink rifles.” Funny but more delusional than accurate.

These people are violence personified. They are the heirs of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pot, and all the other brutal leftist dictators of the 20th Century. Then, they collectively racked up a death toll of about 250 Million. That’s anything but soft or wimpy. “Dangerous” is more like it.

They may have taken a short break while they tried to take down the Second Amendment. And by “they,” I mean the ordinary liberals; their leaders never put down the sword (or the bombs). When the assault on the 2A failed and failed pretty miserably I guess they decided to get back to their more traditional ways.

This morning they stormed back in style. More of this is coming and not just against Congress.

So, what should we, the remnants of the Old America do? I’d suggest preparing for battle. One survivor of this morning’s attack credited a police officer with saving lives. As usual in these matters, things took a turn for the better as soon as a good guy with a gun showed up and started shooting back.

If the officer(s) hadn’t been there, this could have turned into a multiple homicide bloodbath. That’s the commonality with political assassination attempts, violent crimes, and terror strikes – they all rely on unarmed, soft targets.

It’s time we ended that part of the equation. Why wait for an officer who might not be there? Arm yourselves. Train yourselves. Carry everywhere. Shoot back. And win. Winning will be kind of important…

While this could have really been a stand-alone event, the insular work of a single nut case, something not likely to be repeated, it could also be something more and something much worse. Remember all the fracturing after a century of descent. The shots fired first thing this morning could well be the first shots of a new civil war.

The left is afraid. Of everything. They used to limit their animosity to just whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians, and guns (and especially if these were combined in one nightmare person). Now anything goes. If it makes any kind of sense whatsoever, they are adamantly opposed. They are so out of sorts that their hair turns blue.

And nowhere is this hatred of the normal and the traditional more evident than on college campi.

Colleges used to be in business to teach.Today they preach. And “equality” is the sermon of the century. We are all equal, in their eyes, no matter how wildly different we actually are.

Of course, some are so equal as to require special treatment. Take for instance Carlton University, Canada’s Capital University. Diversity and equality are paramount at this “school”. So much so that they have declared war on men’s fitness.

You see, men are scary. They are especially scary in the gym. True, men and womyn are exactly alike. But, still, the womyn need a little alone time. No worries: “Contrary to what opponents argue, this gym proposal is not sexism or segregation.” Feel better now? No segregation. It’s just equality and some are at least one hour per day more equal than others.

4, Marquette University, a Catholic university, incidentally, has removed any mention of the word “Christmas”in their tree-lighting ceremony and discontinued the blessing and any mention of the Advent. One Marquette professor objected to this on his blog:

That “diversity” and “inclusion” require censoring and silencing all things Christian is a typical attitude of the politically correct. Of course, this is not “inclusive,” but rather exclusionary.

Genuine inclusion would mean recognizing the diversity of religious beliefs and traditions. The National Menorah, on public property just south of the White House, is an example. If Muslim students at Marquette wanted to stage events to celebrate Ramadan they would certainly be allowed to by Marquette (although Ramadan is usually in the summer with few students around).

But Christianity is different. Secular leftists don’t much like Christianity.

Exactly. Just as feminism is a false face for an effort to have womyn dominate men (one gym hour at a time), so secularism is a plan to overcome Christendom and replace it with empty, Satanic communism.

People are beginning to wake up to this nonsense. It may be found at each and every Western school. A small, easily frightened man, nominally associated with a college near me, recently remarked that I was “a little scary”. I suppose he takes offense at my seasonal display of Christmas ties. Therefore, in an effort to help spread equality of scariness, I proudly present yet another scary Christmas tie: